APA 7 formatting guide for theses

In-text citations

APA follows the author–date system. Each citation in your text carries the author’s surname with the year, and it should lead to one entry only in the reference list. There are two kinds, parenthetical and narrative. A parenthetical citation puts everything inside brackets at the end of the clause. In a narrative citation the author’s name comes as part of your own sentence, and only the year goes in brackets.

The biggest change from the sixth edition is about works with three or more authors. You write the first author plus “et al.” from the very first citation. The old rule of listing all the names the first time is gone now.

Rules that come up in every thesis

• Ampersand or “and”. The “&” sign is for inside brackets and tables only, and in your normal sentence you just write “and”.
• Direct quotations need the page number also, so (Rao, 2021, p. 48) or (Rao, 2021, pp. 48–49). Source without page numbers means you give paragraph number or section name, like (Menon, 2020, para. 4).
• Several works in one bracket are put in alphabetical order and separated by semicolons, as in (Iyer, 2019; Menon & Das, 2022; Rao et al., 2021).
• Same author, same year: put letters after the year, like (Rao, 2021a, 2021b). The reference list should carry the same letters.
• No date: write it as (Rao, n.d.).
• Secondary sources: cite the work you have actually read, for example (Kumar, 1998, as cited in Rao, 2021). Only Rao (2021) goes in the references. Use this rarely, because examiners like it more when you have gone to original source.
• Same “et al.” form for different works: sometimes two papers both become “Rao et al., 2021” when shortened. Then write out as many author names as needed to separate the two.
• Personal communications like interviews, emails or lectures you attended are cited in the text only. They do not go into the reference list.

Reference list basics

The reference list starts on a fresh page, with the label References on top in bold and centred. The whole list is double-spaced, and you sort it by the surname of the first author. Each entry gets a 0.5-inch hanging indent. Every entry has the same four parts in the same order, author, date, title, source.

• Authors: surname, then initials. Up to 20 authors are written out, with “&” before the last one. For 21 or more, give the first 19, an ellipsis and the final author, and no ampersand here.
• Titles of articles and chapters are in sentence case and not italic. Titles of books, reports, theses and datasets are in sentence case and italic. Journal names take title case and italics, and the volume number is italic too.
• DOIs are written in URL form, for example https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx. Nobody writes the “doi:” label in front any more, and “Retrieved from” before a URL has also gone.
• Publisher location is no longer included for books, so the city is simply dropped.
• When the author and the publisher are the same organisation, write the name one time only, as the author.

Reference examples by source type

All the patterns below use placeholder names. Italics are shown the way they should come in your own list.

Journal article with a DOI

Rao, P. K., Menon, S., & Das, A. (2021). Title of the article in sentence case: Subtitle after a colon. Journal Name in Title Case, 14(3), 215–232. https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxxxx

The issue number (3) goes in brackets, and it is not italic. Some articles have an article number and no page numbers. For those, you write “Article e0209899” where the page range would go. An article with no DOI but free online gets the journal’s URL for it. Otherwise the reference just ends after the page range.

Authored book

Iyer, R. (2019). Title of the book: Subtitle (2nd ed.). Publisher Name. https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx

Below is a real example, the way APA gives it for its own manual. Author and publisher are the same here, so the publisher is not repeated.

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

Chapter in an edited book

Menon, S., & Das, A. (2020). Title of the chapter. In R. Iyer & K. Nair (Eds.), Title of the edited book (pp. 101–124). Publisher Name. https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx

Notice that the editors’ initials come before their surnames. For authors it is the opposite way.

Web page

Organisation Name. (2024, March 5). Title of the web page. Site Name. https://www.example.org/page

If the site name is the same as the author, leave it out. You add a retrieval date (“Retrieved May 2, 2026, from https://…”) only when the page is designed to change over time, for example a live dashboard.

Dataset

Organisation Name. (2022). Title of the dataset (Version 2.1) [Data set]. Publisher or Repository Name. https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx

Doctoral thesis or dissertation

Kumar, V. (2023). Title of the thesis [Doctoral dissertation, Name of University]. Name of Database or Archive. https://…

Maybe you read the thesis in print, or it is not in any database. Then use “[Unpublished doctoral dissertation]” and give the university as the source. For a thesis on Shodhganga, follow the first pattern and put Shodhganga as the archive.

Conference paper

Das, A. (2022, December 8–10). Title of the paper [Paper presentation]. Name of the Conference, City, Country. https://…

A paper from formal proceedings can be cited in two ways. When the proceedings come out in a journal, cite it like a journal article. When they are published as a book, treat it like a chapter in an edited book.

Report from an organisation

Name of Ministry or Organisation. (2021). Title of the report (Report No. 12). https://…

Headings: levels 1 to 5

There are five heading levels in APA 7. Every level is bold, and levels 3 and 5 are italic as well. Go in order, so a level 3 heading comes only under a level 2. Don’t put a heading called “Introduction” at the top of the paper, because the title of the paper already does that work.

In a thesis, mostly the university format fixes the chapter titles, many times as “CHAPTER 1” with the title on the next line. You then use the APA levels for the headings inside each chapter. Decide this in the beginning itself and follow it the same way till the last chapter. APA itself does not use numbered headings like 1.1 and 1.2.1. Still, many universities are asking for them in the thesis. Then keep the numbers as your university wants, and format only the heading text as per APA.

Tables and figures

Tables and figures are built from the same parts. On top is a bold number (Table 1, Figure 1). The title comes on the next line in italic title case. After that is the body, and below the body any note. So the number and the title both go above the table or figure.

• Tables get one numbering and figures get another, in the order you first mention them. Every table and figure must be referred to somewhere in the text (“as Table 3 shows”).
• Inside a table only horizontal lines are drawn. Vertical lines are not used at all, and shading is used only when it carries some meaning.
• A note can be general (“Note. Data from…”), specific (superscript letters on particular cells) or a probability note (* p < .05).
• When a table or figure is reproduced or adapted from another source, the note has to say this and cite the source (“Adapted from…”). A copyrighted figure may need the publisher’s permission too before you reproduce it.
• You can place them in the text after the first mention, or on separate pages after the references. Theses almost always keep them in the text, but check what your university format says.

Statistics are also reported in APA style. Statistical symbols like M, SD, t, F and p are italicised. When a value can never be more than 1, drop the leading zero, as in p = .032.

Student paper or professional paper?

With the seventh edition, APA brought separate formats for student papers (coursework) and professional papers (manuscripts sent to journals).

For your PhD thesis, neither of these title pages is used, since the university gives its own. Papers you send to a journal take the professional format, but if that journal’s author guidelines say different, go by them. Many journals have their own adapted version of APA, and in that case the journal guidelines are followed first.

Basic layout is common to both, with 1-inch (2.54 cm) margins and double spacing. Choose one legible font and keep it in whole document. APA gives options such as 12-point Times New Roman, 11-point Calibri, 11-point Arial, 11-point Georgia and 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode. Indent your paragraphs 0.5 inch. Text goes left-aligned and the right edge is left ragged, since full justification is not there in APA.

Common mistakes we correct in theses

Most of the APA corrections we do while editing a thesis come from the list below. You can check each of these yourself without much effort.

• Citations in the text not tallying with the list. Some source is cited in the text but it is not there in the list. Or it is in the list but never cited in the text, or the year is different in the two places. Before you submit, go through every citation against the list one by one.
• Old sixth-edition habits, such as giving all authors at the first citation, publisher cities, “Retrieved from” and the “doi:” prefix.
• “et al” without the full stop after “al”, or written as “et. al.” with an extra full stop after “et”.
• “&” in running text (“Rao & Menon found…”). Once the names are outside the brackets, it has to be “and” in words.
• Title case for article titles in the reference list. Article and chapter titles take sentence case. Title case is kept only for journal names.
• Missing or wrong italics. Volume of the journal should be italic, but the issue number should not be.
• Numbered or unsorted reference list. An APA list goes in alphabetical order and it has no numbers.
• Reference manager output taken on trust. Zotero, Mendeley and EndNote are excellent tools. But the entries they import many times comes with wrong capitals, a missing issue number or the journal name in capitals. Read the whole list once with your own eyes.

Checking the full thesis for citation consistency is part of our thesis editing and proofreading. Department using numbered references, not APA? Then read the IEEE citation guide.